2007, and 2008 and many americans are feeling let's say reluctant about greater involvement in the middle east. with those caveats in mind what is it you're saying to our leaders, what is it you would like to say to the american people how the united states can never play a constructive role, perhaps a more active role in helping iraq move forward from this delicate situation? >> translator: well, i believe that the relations between the united states and iraq is about a strategic contract and stability in iraq is stability not only for the country and interests of the united states but for the whole world and if iraq were to collapse or to enter a civil war this will have very negative impact on the interests of the united states and the countries in the region and it will be a genuine

disaster worldwide. so of course i do not call for any interference in iraq and reject it, even if it is the united states but friends also should provide advice and support and should play a role in order to bring the parties closer together. they should support their friend when they are in trouble. i mean we need weapons. we need political stand. we need an economic support and the united states need iraq to be a stable country to be secure, to be able to produce energy, to be democratic. all these are american and iraqi interests alike. following the withdrawal of the american forces we felt that

iraq was left on its own while it was not stable yet or balanced enough and was not yet able to completely move towards a transition to a strong state. this is why at this point the center of power is balanced and situation that is something we need today. the united states politically withdrew in the last few years and they started moving or shifting their attention away from iraq but now with return of al qaeda and the increasing and escalating violence in iraq the united states are looking back at iraq and therefore i believe the united states can play a very important role in bringing the parties closer together in iraq and in supporting iraq in its fight against al qaeda and in providing necessary expertise to encourage national

reconciliation. and so to try to restore the cohesion in iraq and we know that iraq has very important relations with other countries, iran has influence. turkey has influence. arab countries as influence. as a superpower united states has influence over all the countries in the middle east and iraq needs a long-term friendship with the united states, a friendship though based on values of democracy and respect of human rights. and stable, successful state. not a state that is working outside legitimacy and with discrimination and oppression. i think that in washington americans understand the problems of iraq and are convinced that they should concentrate on iraq once again in order to protect it from the lack of stability in view of of course of the situation in syria and the problems over all the

middle east, the americans also do not want iraq to be another region that exports problems and terrorism but rather wants it to be an oasis of democracy and stability. this is what we hope for. >> one last question for you in the minute we have remaining, mr. speaker. iraq is expected to have national elections at end of april. what would you like the united states to do around the elections to make sure they're positive? we have seen elections in iraq that were extremely helpful for iraqi democracy and we've seen elections in iraq that were destructive of iraqi democracy. what can the united states do to assure these are constructive elections, not destructive? >> translator: well, there should be a message that should come from all countries to iraq that the elections should be respected and organized in a just and transparent way and

circumstances should be prepared. we should have minimum stability by april. and there should not be decisions that are controversial like the one that was taken two days ago. reaction to demands about creating -- and so on. we should avoid political provocations. we should avoid confessional mobilization in order to be able to organize fair and just elections that can provide a solution to the iraqi problem. if we do not have such circumstances, if we do not have international observers and united states should be present to observe as should the united nations and all countries, if we do not have all this, the elections can be very destructive. so this is a historic chance and it is a crossroad between either stability or god forbid, between

other and more intricate problems. >> thank you so much. please join me in thanking the speaker for extremely wide and enlightening presentation. [applause] >> thank you. . .

>> on c-span today we're live from the conference of mayors meeting, join is us later today for remarks from housing secretary shaun donovan live on our companion network, c-span. a little later, the republican national committee's annual winter meeting is taking place this in washington, d.c., live at 2 p.m. eastern on c-span. and over on c-span3 today, live from annapolis with a speech from governor martin o'malley. that'll be live starting at noon eastern, again, on c-span3. >> unfortunately, many americans americans -- some because of their poverty and some because

of their color and all too many because of both. our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity, and this administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in america. [applause] >> looking back at five decades of notable state of the union addresses from lbj to george w. bush, sunday at 3 p.m. eastern. part of american history tv this weekend on c-span3. or that's all leading up to president president obama's 2014 state of the union address, live tuesday on c-span, c-span radio and c san.org. c-span.org. >> c-span launched its first c-span school bus in 1993, visiting hundreds of schools this communities nationwide and raising awareness on how c-span

covers politics and government with our public affairs programming. today, 20 years later, the c-span bus continues on the road, on the campaign trail and visiting book festivals, history events, education conferences and schools. look for us on the road and online at our web site, c-span.org. you can also follow us on twitter, all brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. and this winter university students will get their chance to join us mornings live on "washington journaling" as we hit the road for the big 12 conference tour. >> yesterday the u.s. conference of mayors continued their winter meeting here this washington d.c. staffers from the labor and commerce departments updated the mayors on the newest initiatives to help job growth and improved work force skills. frank orr disserves as chair of the committee. this is about an hour. >> i want to start our program

today by introducing our first two speakers together, as they will be presenting on the partnership between the departments of labor and commerce to address the skills gap in this country. our first speaker today is cima who joined the u.s. department of labor as deputy chief of staff as a secretary in october 2013. she previously headed the office of special counsel for immigration-related unfair employment practices, osc, in the civil rights division of the department of justice. prior to joining osc, she worked directly on labor issues and employment discrimination matters for over 12 years. cima is joined today by kate adams, senior adviser to the secretary of congress. we have some big people here today. [laughter] before joining the department, kate served as ec tiff executive director for the ptff which

invests in people and programs to improve schools, promote health and fitness, support arts and culture and expand skills training both in chicago and nationally. they will discuss ways in which mayors can work to build stronger partnerships among business, industry, labor and state and local governments to better sustain the nation's work force capacity, thereby growing the nation's economic vitality. please welcome our first speaker. [applause] >> thank you very much, mayor ortis, and it's an absolute pleasure to be with you all today. i thought as someone born and raised in connecticut we were going to have significant connecticut representation, but i think florida is going to win the representation award today. very happy to be with you today. i think i'm particularly happy

to be here today because i think as you all know from, certainly, from secretary pritzker's remarks this morning that skills are really front and center in this administration and across the cabinet. i also wanted to thank my colleagues here today, kate as well as adrian and heidi who, they are not johan, but together they are much more than the equal of johan together. [laughter] but across education and commerce and really throughout the cabinet, the conversations we've been having on the skills agenda are numerous. i spend a lot of time with these people, and i also wanted to introduce my colleague, ben segal, who along with marlena sessions will be answering all the difficult questions for dol today. so as the secretary, secretary perez goes across the country, he's been meeting with businesses, certainly with our mayors and state government.

he's been meeting with the long-term unemployed, he's been meeting with employers, he's been meeting with foundations. and i think with all of this he has a very acute understanding that the solutions are really more often than not local. they're driven by the regional leadership, they're driven by the local work force system, they're driven by industry in a particular area, they're driven by the community colleges, their driven by the local work force investment boards, and a one-size approach in dealing with the skills issues this our country -- in our country is not going to fit all. so while there is a critical role for the federal government to play in the work force systems, so much of it will be and should be driven at the local and state level. the secretary today is actually with, in san francisco working with some of mayor lee's people to put together some wonderful work in the skills area on

immigrant integration that the mayor's office really helped us put together. so there's really partnership at every level that we've been working on. so i know you all work very closely with dol and the work force investment act system in a variety of ways, and i hope that i know we have three presentations, and i'll try to keep my remarks brief. but i hope we have some time to really hear back from you on what we can be doing after we tell you a little bit more about what we're working on. so a little bit about what the problem is we're trying to address. we have more than 88 million adults in our country with at least one major educational barrier; either no high school diploma, no college or esl language needs. the new oecd study released this october showed that americans are decidedly weeker in

pneumonia rah si and problem-solving skills, and the average scores are certainly well below the top countries which were japan and finland. we have a challenge of 10.4 million unemployed this the country with 4 million job openings. and if you add the individuals who are marginally attached to the work force, you have another 2.4 million people. and yet at the same time, we have employers regularly reporting to us that they are not finding workers with the right skills for the existing jobs. so for the more long-term employed, low-skilled workers, new americans, immigrant populations, older workers, returning service members, disconnected youth, we know that the problems are even more acute, and we also know that the solutions are often not just about job training, they're often a lot more complex. so whether we call it a skills gap or something else, we know that training in work force

development is critical to building sturdy ladders of opportunity to the middle class and economic advancement which is something our president has been talking so much about and our secretaries as well at all three levels and, certainly, around the cabinet. so this is not all to say that our system is brocken. last year -- broken. the last year the american job centers, our 2500 american job centers all around the country served more than 32 million people. in this includes more than 20 million people being directly served by american job centers whether it was job training, career counseling, job search assistance, resumé building, the job centers helped over 415,000 people obtain industry-recognized credentials, and we know that those credentials are really your ticket to a middle class, the middle class and something you can take with you from job to job.

and more and more we're working on making sure those credentials are portable and stack bl so you can have these lifelong earning opportunities as you go and out of, people go in and out of the work force. and we hope to get 550,000 unemployed veterans into jobs in our american job centers. in addition, many of you are using our federal work source resources to support public/private partnerships, and i think, mayor ortiz, talking about the grant he just received is one of those examples. some other examples, the secretary was just this in detroit along with the rest of the wrap net, quite literally -- cabinet, quite literally. but what he observed in detroit and, actually, i think this was on a prior trip, was detroit manufacturing systems is one example of a company that, new company, decided they wanted to make certain auto parts and are looking for a work force. and they worked with their local

american jobs center and found 712 employees, previously unemployed, that they were able to all obtain through the american job centers. so that's just one example of someone who can really work with their american jobs center and find what they need through that center and make a dent in long-term and regular unemployment. secretary perez also spent some time in chicago last month where he visited gohealth, one of the fastest-growing health insurance technology firms in the country. and gohealth is receiving no-cost assistance in identifying job candidates through skills for chicagoland's future which i think kate will talk more about ask which secretary pritzker has been very intimately involved before she moved into the secretary of commerce role. so we know that these successful models are out there, but we also know that across the

government, in the federal government and throughout our entire public work force system, there's a whole lot more we can be doing. we need a better approach. so all too frequently our system is working this silos -- in silos. we have regional partners who are not working always with the employers this their areas, and across the federal government interagency collaboration can sometimes be difficult. we know that businesses are not engaged at all levels. and despite the fact that they should care just as much about this as they do about different trade issues, different minimum wage issues, all the other issues they are following -- because this is really about their work force. so we are working right now across the government to connect all these programs to a national strategy. and what we'd really like to do is to do a lot more to brand our work. the work that the more than jobs

centers and the different programs around the country are incredible. but be if you talk to 80 and 90 of employers, if you talk to to them and they tonight know about them, there's a question of, you know, there's a disconnect there, and there's clearly more we could all be doing. i want to tell you a little bit about the interagency process that we have been working on that has involved a significant part of the cabinet with lay wore and commerce and -- labor and commerce and education really playing critical roles. so we have all been meeting over last several months and talking about whether we can agree on a common set of really industry-driven principles, principles that really involve getting employers at the table to involve them in the system of defining what are the jobs, their job needs. and through programs like tact and others and tying them to that work force system and developing curriculums.

but we want to look at every part of government and sort of see what we can do if we come up with these common principles. i think we all recognize that there's probably not a whole lot of new money coming into the system. and that's a hard thing to swallow. but we need to be smarter with our dollars. a few of the strategies that we've talked about involve focusing not on telling states and local governments what to do, but coming up with common approaches and really seeing what we can do to help spur innovation at the state and local level. because we truly believe that a lot of solutions are local, and when you get the right people in a room together, you can have a whole lot more of the sum of the parts. so what can we do across the federal government to spur getting the employers, getting the community colleges, getting the intermediaries, getting organized labor in the room together and working on some of these solutions.

we are heavily focused on sector and industry partnerships and seeing what we could do across our programs to spur those. this means that we want to bring small and medium-sized employers, and large employers too, in a particular industry and figure out what's going on with their industry and what we can do on that level to drive economic growth this a particular industry. -- in a particular industry. and as marlena mentioned, very much focused on career pathways as well as credentialing, which i talked about. and we have a heavy focus in looking into whether we can do more on on-the-job training and apprenticeship, because we know these are things that really take some of that risk away from employers, and they work. the statistics for on-the-job training and apprenticeship with people staying in those jobs are really quite remarkable. they're expensive programs, obviously, so, you know, they require some creativity, and they're going to require some buy-in with industry to really

fete that rolling. -- get that rolling. and i think i our collaboration with commerce in particular is exactly in this space. it's about finding ways to bring employers into the system and to really have them become active participants in the work force development programs with skin in the game. so one of our strategies is to really drive them in whether it's with their local american centers or finding partnerships this the area. we've also worked with education to, on programs like tact and career connect. and as mayor richie said, you're all out there working on your applications, i know. and i just want to turn for a minute to a little bit of -- i've been talking about skills, but i want to turn a little bit to the wage gap and pivot slightly to the other major part, i think, of secretary perez's agenda which is the same

agenda of the president, and that's insuring that all americans and u.s. workers have really a fair shake. so we're very focused right now on the minimum wage. secretary perez has been around the country talking about that. he's been around the country talking about unemployment insurance, and i think one of the big successes we just had at the department of labor is with the home care regulations where we closed a gap in the fair labor standards act with a regulation that now protects home care workers and applies minimum wage as well as overtime protections to them. basically, two million new workers are protected by minimum wage law. so we're really looking throughout our programs to see what we can do to deal more largely with this inequality issue. but the skills gap is really front and center or, i was

trying not to use the term skills gap, the skills issue is really front and center of all of this, because it gets at the heart of the matter which is about getting people into not just jobs, but career pathways. and just a word on partnership, i think this is a wonderful start, but we'd really like to be working with you systematically as we engage in this process to align our system at the local level. and we really want you to be engaged with us on communicating what is working in your system, what you think we could be doing better at federal level to have things work better, what can we be doing to reduce bureaucracy this our system and -- in our system and make things function better? so this is part of our process, and we definitely want you to be a part of it. and with that, i'll turn it over to kate. >> great, thank you. well, good afternoon. my name is kate mcadams, i'm

senior adviser to secretary penny pritzker at the department of commerce, and i lead our skilled work force agenda. i want to thank mayor ortis and the committee for having me today. and i want to recognize two colleagues, brian borlick and mark trope from our manufacturing extension partnership. that's a mouthful, also known as mep. i'm so glad i'm here today with seema, adrian and heidi. we are really working together and starting to find ways where we can really align the assets of our three departments. during lunch you heard from secretary pritzker about the department's open-for-business agenda, and i'll be focusing my remarks on one pillarover that agenda, our skilled work force. before i go ahead, i have one personal note i wanted to add. i have a deep respect and admiration for mayors. i worked for two mayors, mayor

john dereceive know and former mayor daley in my hometown of chicago. so hello to all the local chicago ans. i'm very happy to be here today, and i know what a difficult but rewarding job mayors have and that each and every day you're working to make the lives of your residents better, so i'm honored to be here. since joining commerce in june, the secretary has met with over 800 business leaders, and the one thing that keeps coming up over and time and time again is that employers are not finding the right workers with the right skills to fill their open jobs. as you may know, labor economists debate the existence of an actual skills gap in this country, but employers constantly complain they're up able to find the right talent, so there's clearly a problem. and as mayors, you know that skill gaps vary by region and industry cluster, and i bet you're hearing from employers almost every day as well. you may wonder about the role of the department of commerce in this space. commerce is an amazingly diverse

department with bureaus that deal with patent and trademark, oceans and weather, trade promotion and minority business development, manufacturing, huge amounts of data from our census bureau, economic development, science and standard-setting and innovation and entrepreneurship. across all of these bureaus, we emphasize that we are a bridge to business, and the mission of commerce is to help set the conditions for economic growth. in order to promote economic growth, we also must have a focus on human capital, preparing our workers for the jobs of today and tomorrow, and that's where our new skills focus fits in. secretary pritzker is very passionate about this. you heard her today at lunch. she has made it a departmental priority for the very first time in commerce's history. a few months ago secretary pritzker launched the department's open-for-business

agenda. it includes the following policy priority areas: trade and investment, innovation, investment, data, environment and operational excellence. our skilled work force focus is within the innovation area because without a trained and innovative work force, firms can't grow, and workers won't prosper. skills training is essential for economic growth and global competitiveness, and right now there is an urgency to focus on better alignment of employers' needs and the ecosystem of training providers. and yet, this slide somewhat masks the you urgency. you can see that employment is growing, 8.2 million jobs over the past four years. and the unemployment rate is coming down, 6.7% at end of last year. these are huge improvements. but we know this is not the full story. despite these promising trends,

full labor market recovery has not been achieved when approximately 10.4 million u.s. workers remain unemployed. of particular concern is that 4.1 million of the unemployed have been jobless for six months or longer, and 2.8 of those have been unemployed for a year or longer. while employment is increasing, we need to see it increase more in order to put the unemployed and ores sitting -- others sitting on the sidelines of the labor market back to work. job openings are up 66% since the end of the recession which tells us, clearly, businesses want to hire. but hiring rates are only up one-quarter. meanwhile, secretary pritzker and, i'm sure, many of you in this room are hearing from countless business leaders about the difficulty they're having finding the right workers. in some cases, the businesses themselves may need to do more when they can't find the right workers such as raise wages,

dedicate more resources to recruiting efforts, review what skills and competencies they really need and the way, review how they're screening their candidates. and the government can also do more. as seema said, secretary pritzker is partnering with the secretaries of labor and education and others in the administration to do just that. we need to reassess how the federal government is investing in work force development. and as secretary pritzker quoted at lunch if you heard her, she quoted secretary perez today. he often says that we can no longer train and pray. and what he means by that is that we can no longer invest in training that doesn't lead to a job and a career pathway. instead, what we need to do is we need to bring businesses, educating and training institutions, unions, state and local governments and others together in partnership to insure that training responds to

industry needs. while the department of -- while the department of commerce does not directly fund training in the way that labor or education do, we do directly touch industry-driven work force development in a few areas, and we wanted to elevate that work. our economic development administration is making connections between economic development and work force development. making sure a region is attractive to investment and supports innovative workers and firms. for example, eda, our economic development administration, has provided over $25 million since 2011 for training facilities and related infrastructure that meet the needs of the work force and of local businesses. this is especially important for hard-hit communities. many of our manufacturing extension partnership centers, located all across the united states, help small and medium

manufacturers assess their work force needs, both current and future, and address their work force challenges as they plan for new product development, new markets or streamlining their operations. this month five hep centers will task a cloud-based software application that can help small manufacturers manage and implement talent planning decisions. the technology tool will help businesses have realtime, relevant data about the efficacy of their work force investment. also at commerce we sit on a tremendous amount of data from the census, from the american community survey, there our business census and from our other statistical programs. we are at the early stages of how we can look at this data, how can we can make it more accessible and open to the organizations and businesses who could potentially develop new tools to improve knowledge transfer and communication between job seekers and employers. and, of course, commerce's major

access is our access to industry. commerce's major asset is our access to industry. thousands of commerce employees from the secretary herself to staff down at our regional offices directly engage with business every day. we're working with labor and education to identify ways we can lev ofage these relationships -- leverage these relationships. engaging employers is a key piece of making training more industry driven of and job focused. effective, industry-driven training includes m employer partnerships whether it's an employer/community college partnership, whether it's industry association working with training partners on the youth and adoption of industry-recognized credentials, whether it's regional collaborations that align work force, economic development and education investments or if it's an apprentice program training learners to train toward a job. such partnerships have become highly valued by -- have become highly valued in helping

companies find and hire skilled workers. these workers in turn help the bidses grow, increase productivity, innovate and compete. as mayors, you are incredibly important conveners. you are the catalyst to engage local stakeholders and make regional partnerships a reality. i saw this firsthand over a year ago in chicago, which seema mentioned. i helped secretary pritzker -- penny at that time -- help launch a nonprofit business intermediary. it works with employers to help them identify their hiring needs and then places or trains long-term unemployed individuals to fill their open positions. it's an excellent program, as secretary perez was interested in seeing firsthand, and it would not have happened without the leadership of mayor emanuel. the mayor catalyzed skills for chicago land's future by bringing together city colleges,

the work force investment board, the chief human resource officers from the major employers this the area and the philanthropic community and others. so secretary pritzker and the department of commerce understand well the important role you play to address the skills gap in your communities. we will continue to encourage employers to not only engage with the local economic development organizations, the work force board and the education system, but directly with you, the local leadership, to get the right people to the table and implement local solutions. with your involvement we can help the private sector identify the most effective partnerships, and we should act now as more of these businesses look to hire and as our economy regains traction. thank you. >> well, thank you. [applause] thank you, ladies, for that great, great information. before i take, open up for discussion and questions, i know a few mayors, more mayors came

in. i saw mayor alvin brown from jacksonville, florida, mayor luigi, doral, mayor. would you state your names at the back? >> [inaudible] arkansas. >> welcome. >> [inaudible] >> mayor, welcome. i saw some over here. i'm sorry, mayor brown, mayor of compton, california. >> [inaudible] >> aja. any others? >> [inaudible] >> welcome. i love puerto rico. [laughter] i do, i do. anybody else over on that side? yes. go ahead. >> [inaudible] >> good to see you. >> mayor patrick -- north carolina. >> great speech this afternoon as well. >> thank you. >> anybody else? >> we're going to need some more space here. >> [inaudible] >> hey, welcome. >> [inaudible] >> we worked on many committees together, welcome. what else? okay. let's open it up for discussion

or questions. mayor, would you introduce yourself, and i'll come to you, vice chair? >> [inaudible] now my -- [inaudible] oh, okay. i want to address the minimum wage in probably a different way that you don't think of. my wife and i have a small business, around 20 people. we actually had 26 or 28 before the recession, but we're coming back. but the thing that, two things bother me about the minimum wage. one, i think you're jumping at too much, and you probably know that. from seven and a quarter, ten and a quarter. that is really tough on businesses. maybe go eight and a quarter ask then go -- you know what i'm trying to say. but the thing that bothers me the most is we hire a lot of high school kids, and i think there should be two minimum wages. i think there should be a minimum wage for 14-17-year-old

children, and then a 18 and above minimum wage. we've probably hired over 120 students in our business over the years, and we're, unfortunately, having to hire less and less. and it really gives, talk about apprenticeship,you work in our business two years as a high school child, every one of them have done extremely well in college. we teach them how to come to work, shave, look nice, shake your hand, thank the customers. so i think this is really important, and we do a lot of minority hiring also at our business, especially high school children. so if you can structure the minimum wage to have maybe two minimum wages, a 14-17-year-old, which i think if you jump it to ten and a quarter, i think students are not going to be hired. the last time i put an application out for a counter person, i had so many applications, i had college graduates, master's degrees, you know? just incredible amount of people

applying for a job where ten years ago i would have had one or two. probably had over a hundred last year. so our employment is looking better, but there's still a lot of people out there that need work. so i'm just throwing that out about the possibility of having the double, two standards for -- let kids have jobs. if kids don't have jobs now, they're going to get in trouble. in my day 80% of all the kids had jobs. i think cnbc said two weeks ago only 40% of kids in america have jobs right now. so just keep that -- >> thank you, mayor. >> i appreciate, i appreciate the comment, and i also appreciate, i know this committee has focused a lot on youth jobs and youth summer jobs in the past, and i think it's an important, that issue this particular is an important part of the equation. and it sounds like you're doing a lot at your company. >> we hire year round. they're hired year round. >> yeah. i think that sort of aparen decisionship is important, and

on your specific proposal, i will certainly take it back. >> thank you. >> [inaudible] >> yeah, thank you, mr. chairman. so the conference over the last several years has, i think, really pushed starting with the work force development summit that we had in dallas really, really pushed on the career pathways notion. try and get sort of beyond the traditional fight between -- and i'm thinking mostly around the younger population at the moment, try and get beyond the romanticism about 1950s vocational education that didn't even really work in the 1950s for the vast majority of kids, and that always comes back up when we're in a recession. when we're in a boom, then it's all about everybody needs to go to college, college for all, college for all. then the recession hits, back to vvoc ed. we integrate college and career for all students with the notion that all of them, even if you're going to college, you're going to be in the work force sportsupporting yourself, and some form of postsecondary education is necessary.

so we've pushed hard on those standards to create integrated college and career readiness as mayors, linked up with work-based learning partly recognizing the problem of youth unemployment, but bringing it together so students are learning to apply their technical skills in an actual real-world situation with adults. so to me, it's very earn couraging, what the departments have all been doing starting with the trade adjustment grants, the youth career connect grant which you hobbled together out of, you know, funds that, you know, you picked up the loose change in the sofa. this wasn't a congressionally-authorized program, and my experience has been in california it's really generating some significant innovation and partnerships that would not have happened otherwise, but around really high fidelity to this notion of college and career integration and bringing employers to the table. so i wanted to just, first, thank the departments that have been involved in that, and for me, i'm very pleased to see commerce in this equation as well. i think too often our work has

been around how do we bring colleges and high schools together, and we'll have some intermediary that will convene employers, get their feedback, their view about the world, but the work actually is going to get done by the chjs and the high schools. and that's just not how the economy or the work force happens. so commerce at the table bringing in real employers in the ways that you talked about where the intermediaries are doing real things as opposed to simply having a breakfast where we all sign something committing ourselves as employers that we're going to do something. but the skills for chicago land's future, what's happening with the industry council and other examples where they're really doing that work whether it's summer youth placement, workplace money with high schools and colleges, the kind of industry-driven credentials which we don't have nearly enough of, the notion of extending apprenticeships way beyond what we traditionally thought of as apprenticeships. when i first heard the notion of

we need more apprenticeships, i was thinking the building trades, when i think what we're discovering in our own community and region is that that model of apprenticeship can be applied to all sorts of sectors that we never would have thought about before. so i'm very encouraged by what all three departments are doing together and want to congratulate you on that. as you said, there's debate among labor economists about whether there is a skills gap. i'm not unique. i know in my own region my city has the largest number of jobs per capita, we have three jobs per person, enough for every man, woman, child and half of the dogs in the city. [laughter] so we have plenty of jobs. and we have the second highest unemployment rate in the region. and so it's not simply as a mayor, much of my focus is attracting new companies, building the companies we already have to add additional employment. that strategy hasty minishing returns -- diminishing returns

if we're not addressing in deep ways for adults and for youth the kinds of skills and long-term employability and college readiness that you're doing. so i just wanted to put it in context of the work we've been doing at the conference of mayors, want to thank the three departments for finding the funds to try to support the work that's happening and the innovation that's occurring in our cities. >> thank you, mayor. >> i would love to hear from our partners at education, but i would just echo the first point you made about vocational training. and is really i think more and more the conversation, a lot of it is, you know, how we market these things. people go in and out of, people go in and out of education. back to my point about it being a lifelong, a lifelong thing, this education process, and you'll see a lot of people if they're talking about going to community college and doing something where they're working with their hands and that leads them to the next thing and this

is a path, it's not a end, and it's incumbent upon all of us to talk about and raise up these models. so i think that was an excellent point. i'd love -- >> any comment? >> i'd just make one comment about the kind of perception issue of vocational ed. we had a call yesterday with our advanced manufacturing partnership council, so we had these very well known, big manufacturing ceos on the phone talking about demand-driven training principles. they were giving us excellent feedback. and on the point about perception, besides perception problems with manufacturing as a career to enter, perception problems about not college as a great alternative, you know? there isn't one option. college isn't the only option, and changing the messaging around the wonderful options whether it's community colleges or other noncollege routes. so people are, a lot of people are talking about that. and i think we should continue

to work with our education providers about the multiple options that students have. >> i know the chairman's going to kill me, but just to press on the point that even the not-college option, the word "option" is really critical. that in the whole high school experience we've designed that experience so at the point that, one, students are so excited and engaged because they're doing linkals with the actual real world that they do graduate, but when they -- at the point when they graduate, they still have all of those options, right? that they're not choosing in the eighth grade i'm entering a track that's not college, or i'm stuck in a track that is college. we know that we can design real systems at the secondary school level that preserve those choices all the way up to and after the point of high school graduation. >> great discussion. and i want to just tell you that we all talked to our kids in school, all of us mayors, and i tell them you can't predict the future, but you can certainly prepare for it. all of us have done that. i see the unemployment rate went

down in pembroke pines, hired 15 people help that unemployment rate go down. just gave them a raise, we're doing very well. mayor strickland? just wants to add that. >> thank you very much. i know we often talk about young people in college and career track, but is the department of labor doing noig address what i'm calling the people of a certain age; not old enough to retire yet, but definitely still very employable, but find themselves unemployed because of a recession or a changing economy? and how cowe get them into these tracks so they become people who are producing and a very vibrant part of the middle class like they were before they were unemployed? >> i think that's a great point. and, actually, ben segal, my colleague from the employment and training administration, a couple weeks ago organized a round table with the secretary with about 15 long-term unemployed individuals who came

in and told really heartbreaking stories. and i know the long-term unemployed is a subject of ongoing conversations that we are definitely having. but i think certainly at the american job centers there are certainly programs that are there to serve or individuals -- to serve individuals at all stages of their careers whether they're in the work force or transitioning. and certainly, we are thinking hard across the government about what more we can do. if either of you want to add anything, marlena or ben. >> well -- [inaudible] you know, we've historically had a program for -- [inaudible]

so that's part of it. and then, certainly, you know, through our american jobs ventures -- [inaudible] fore or closure, financial -- foreclosure -- [inaudible] >> you hearing stories about people alleging age discrimination because it's cheaper to hire people who are younger as opposed to someone who's more experienced? >> i think, i think we are hearing those stories, definitely. and i also think that often the

stories have different nuances that we hear. i think when individuals came in and talked about their experiences as long-term unemployed, you hear about them also talking about when they're looking now, being asked how much they maid -- made in their last job and sort of not even being considered for jobs because they're going, you know, they can get someone 25 years younger who's going to cost them half as much and maybe will do things that other people won't do. so we definitely hear those stories, i -- but i think there's a lot of nuances that go into that discussion. >> thank you. great discussion. got time for one more, mayor. >> yes. i appreciate all of you collaborating together ask using your reports efficiently. my question is, we literally went at all 12 cost region to do work force outreach as opposed to us just preaching to the choir and recognizing all the

challenge that we have with our industry partners, and we have had significant growth just within the last year. so, but -- and we do have direct partnerships with industry as far as going from the training to the job. but i'm curious, and i appreciate secretary pritzker, her priority, making work force and skills trade, skills work force her priority. my question is, what are some of the details of initiatives that she's working on in trying to get away from the train to pray to directly in a job that she's working with industry? can you give me details on some of those programs? >> sure. i think we're taking advantage of what is one of our major assets, is our access to industry. so, not to be, you know, there are employers who feel more comfortable talking to the d. of commerce about their -- to the department of commerce about their employee and work force needs, for whatever reason.

so we are hearing directly from the employers. i think one of our major initiatives is to be a place where we can almost be an ombudsman. we are talking to employers, understanding what their work force needs are and developing partnerships which did not exist before. it's a great way, for instance, college connect grant program. that's not our money, that's not our program, but we're talking to employers who would like to take advantage of that and may not know about it. on one hand, it's kind of a bully pulpit, convening, ombudsman, information sharing. secondly, we're looking at our existing kind of programs, so our economic development administration -- which i mentioned -- so they are our main economic development arm, and they generally fund facilities, not training programs. so, again, looking at they are comprehensive economic development strategies and insuring that there's, that regions have a work force development component in there is one thing that we have in our kind of tool kit and ability to

influence. and then as i mentioned, our manufacturing extension partnership program. there's one in almost every state, and they vary in terms of how they work on work force development with the small and medium manufacturers that come to their door. they're client-focused, they respond to the needs of those small and medium manufacturers. as i said about even the online tool i mentioned, but some of the areas are working, developing partnerships around the manufacturing industry in their region. so we're encouraging many of our centers to make more of a focus on work force development as they're working with the small and medium manufacturers on lean processing and those type of more common reasons people come to the mep center. >> okay, great discussion. and -- i'm sure we're going to progress on, but if you have any further questions, you can stay for a couple of minutes after the meeting. great. okay. due to weather, our final speaker, dr. johan -- [inaudible] was not able to be here this afternoon. here to speak in his place are

adrian will and heidi silver -- >> [inaudible] >> all right. i worked on that too. adrian serves as special assistant in the department of education's office of vocational and adult education. heidi is the applied innovations and improvements team leader at the department of education's office of vocational and adult education. they're here to discuss results from the recent program for the international assessment of adult competencies, piaac survey of adult skills. these results show that the u.s. work force trails be many other developed nations in fundamental skills essential for individuals and the nation as a whole to thrive including the ability to read, the ability to understand numbers and do math. to better understand these challenges and form the development of a national response and greater input from a range of stakeholders, the u.s. department of education's

launched a national education process with the goal of developing a national action plan to improve the foundation of skills of low skilled adults in the u.s. adrian and heidi are here to tell us more about it. ladies? >> thank you, mayor, and thank you so much for having us. we are not johan, but we are so happy to be here, and we're happy for the opportunity to be able to speak to you. and especially to speak after our colleagues from the department of commerce and department of labor. seema kind of gave you a little preview when she mentioned at the very top of her remarks the oecd report and piacc. we're going to talk a little bit about this assessment that came out in the fall and what did it say, what does it mean and what are some of the things the administration is doing many response to this data. so i'm going to first turn it over to my colleague, heidi, who's going to talk about what is piacc, and then i'll speak

about what the administration is planning to do. >> all right. indeed, this was foreshadowed. what is piacc, it is an assessment conducted by the oecl in 24 countries, and so we're being compared to the countries that you see in yellow. russia's data will come in next year. it will be added in, and there will be another round of countries that will be added into this database. they're looking at conducting this every ten years. so this first report is really a baseline to see how we're doing. it is, has a lot of sample in it. you can see how many hundreds of thousands are in the database. it is looking at skills in toledo mains; literacy, pneumonia rah si and problem-solving this a technology-rich environment. it also has some of what we would call soft skills or employability skills, the cooperation, teamwork, persistence kind of skills listed in the assessment as well. this the -- in the u.s. the

first wave of sample was 5,000. it is nationally representative, but it's not large enough to drill down into some of the smaller subgroups that you might be interested in. but we've got another wave being collected right now by the department of ed, and you can see that they're adding young people, unemployed adults, older adults and incarcerated individuals. so our sample by 2016 will be double, and we'll have enough sample size to drill down into some of the subgroups. but what does it tell us? and seema gave us the bad news first, so i'm glad i didn't go first, kind of depressing. [laughter] we didn't do well. we performed poorly in all toledo mains, literacy, numeracy and problem solving. we're well below the national average. we have a larger-than-average low skill population which is the topic that we're talking

about today, and we have a smaller-than-average high skilled population. so not looking good on either end. this is a little fuzzy from far away, but the highest red arrows -- [laughter] on both sides are the international average, and the lower red arrows on both sides are the u.s. performance. so that's kind of what you need to know, we're well below average in literacy which is on left and in numeracy on the right. finland, korea, japan scored high. we're way down with some of low performers which is not happy news. large low skilled, as i said, we have more proportionately and a very large number because we're a large country, more proportion that wouldly and very large numbers of low skilled adults. this is particularly troubling

because it shows that our young populations are not outpacing our older populations, those of us of a certain age -- i like that education presentation. i'll -- expression. i'll start at bottom of the screen and read up. you can see that in korea the older cohorts -- and, again, this is only going up to age 65 in this first round -- the older cohorts scored very low -- >> the secretary's just walked in. [laughter] >> thank you. the younger cohorts scored very high. going up among our competitors, you can see that in the u.s. our older cohorts and our younger cohorts are close together, and the gap is not large. ..

we've got a lot of young people, as i said. a lot of immigrants, a lot of the low-skilled our men. something you're probably already familiar with. you are already familiar i'm sure with the connection between literacy and health. a lot of the low-skilled are not reporting excellent health. they may be employed but they are earning low wages. these are the recommendations from the oecd report to the u.s. looking at some of the strong performers internationally, what should the u.s. be doing about this? we are taking this to heart, and it echoes all the things that my

colleagues have been talking about. tackled any quality and children coming out of high school without the skills they need, improving access to all those college options that you just mentioned, and keeping those options open through the lifetime. but also building awareness, because where we need your help, building awareness of the connection of this challenge to all the other issues in your community. and i'm going to turn it back to adrian for what the administration is doing. >> thank you, heidi. i.t. just delivered some information -- heidi just delivered some information when we were -- we thought about what can we do as we think about addressing this issue of low skill, low skilled adults in the united states in particular. i apologize that some of these flights are cut off but at the top it says skills are everybody's business. over the past two months we have held five regional engagement

sessions where we presented the field, when i say the field, we have been having conversations with leaders in workforce, from unions, from education, philanthropy, adult literacy providers, folks in community college, the entire spectrum to get feedback on what other things we might able to do to tackle this issue, the fact we of 36 main low-skilled americans in the united states. we are holding conversations with targeted groups and we're happy to be here as well with you to be chairing -- sharing this information. part of it is to help us develop what are some the things we can do as part of this broader skilled strategy that you heard, looking specifically at those adults with low literacy, numeracy and problem-solving technology skills. we are working on a national action plan hoping to be released this spring. some the things will look at our how can we improve access, what are the types of technology we

can use? where clinton we need a dolt workers? -- >> just a couple of moments left in this. you can see the rest online at c-span.org. live begin now to the brookings institution as the panel of experts are preparing to discuss foreign policy issues for the year ahead. this is live coverage on c-span2. >> in five days president obama will stand before the u.s. congress and the american people and deliver his sixth state of the union address. as in recent years he is likely to focus mainly on domestic, political and economic issues. and this reflects the rising concern and president obama's phrase, for nation building at home. and the declining interest among the american public in getting involved in other nations business. president obama came to office in 2009 on a wave of optimism about his transformational presidency. five years later it's fair to

say that the mood have soured and hopes have damned. no doubt the deep economic recession of 2008 -- have damned. -- more profound political and social changes, however, have also conspired against him, growing polarization, gridlock and dysfunction in our political system been high on the list. despite these challenges at home, the president has set forth an ambitious list of priorities when it comes to foreign policy and national security. drawing down troops in iraq and afghanistan, refocusing the fight against terrorism, reducing weapons negotiating with iran, trade talks with the most important partners in europe and the pacific, and restarting direct negotiations between israelis and palestinians. he also faces enormous challenges posed by the uprisings in the arab world, the prolonged economic downturn in europe, the continued rise in

china, and unpredictable north korea, and to reassert russia. today, the foreign policy program at the brookings is releasing its own assessment of these questions, and the steps and five administration should take to make the most of his remaining three years in office. we are excited to present our flagship publication, big bets and black swans, as we did last year we've identified the big bets the president should make to advance u.s. security interest in the world. we also set forth by the areas where the white house should double down on its previous bets to move the agenda forward on iran, syria, cuba and asia. we've also point out a number of black swans, low probability but high impact events that could derail the president's plan, and added a new category of nightmare scenarios that look

more likely to unfold than previously. finally, we pointed out several areas where the president should hold his cards and stay the course. before introduced the panel let me select one or two overarching points about taking and i made in the introductory memo on u.s. leadership of a liberal global order. in our view, over the last year, the global situation has deteriorated, and america's role looks more uncertain and tend to. americans are disillusioned about our traditional leadership role, and cuts in defense and foreign aid spending are raising questions about our commitments to the international system. the revelations about u.s. intelligence collection in our own country and around the world reinforce this sense of doubt about the underbelly of u.s. predominance in the world. to restore u.s. leadership, president obama should reinvest in the global order in which

norms are not only articulated and endorsed, but protected and enforced where possible. this means doubling down on big bets like higher standards in the trade arena, rolling back nuclear weapons development in iran and north korea, and protecting civilians from the ravages of civil conflict and authoritarian violence. it also means making new bets on rules for governing the internet that protect our profound interest in an open information system that is under increasing pressure and threats. we should also make the most of regional and international peacekeeping efforts in africa, protect our long investments in a more stable afghanistan. while pursuing these opportunities, the administration must also mitigate the potential damage posed by the turmoil in the arab world, framing alliances with germany, korea and japan, and

publications from russia and china. we believe that with a dedicated presidential leadership, properly resourced by the congress, these threats can be managed and the united states can remain the leader of the liberal global order. let me now introduce our panelists, and then i'll turn the floor to our moderator. david sanger. david is currently national security -- the chief washington correspondent. he's reported from new york, tokyo and washington on a wide variety of issues on foreign policy, globalization, nuclear proliferation and asian affairs. he's also been part of two reporting teams that won the pulitzer prize. particularly known for his work in tokyo covering japan but also south east asia, north korea and its secret nuclear weapons

program, and got his start working in economics arena and the business pages of "the new york times." david will moderate from the podium and will post a set of questions to our panelists. and let me just quickly introduce them. in no particular order, maybe in the order in which they're sitting starting with bruce riedel, who is a senior fellow andrew the intelligence project here at our center for 21st century security and intelligence. we also have vanda felbab-brown, also in the center for 21st century security and intelligence focusing in particular on afghanistan today but also on a licit networks around the world. steve pifer is senior fellow with our center for u.s. and europe and also drugs for arms control and nonproliferation project. tamara cofman wittes is director for the sub on center for middle east policy and also a senior

fellow who will cover all of there's things going on in that part of the world. suzanne maloney is the senior fellow at the saban center, runs are blog among other things, and will speak on iran. and jonathan pollack is just off the plane from korea will be our expert focusing on asia, china, the koreas, japan, et cetera. jonathan is the director of the john l. thornton china center fellow here. thank you very much for your attention. >> thank you. thanks very much. great beer and also really wonderful to see such a big crowd. this is one of my favorite events at brookings every year because i think this book really sort of is one i keep on my desk all through the year, both so

that i can refer to it on deadline, which i've done on many occasions, and so that when i talked to my many friends i can remind them in december what they wrote in january. sometimes that's welcome, and sometimes it's not. but it's always -- i have two observations from reading through this year's, quite excellent. the first is it's about half as thick as last years was. now, the explanation i received, official explanation is that -- the unofficial one is that this group has solved so many of the world's problems in the past year that brookings saw fit to actually narrow the scope of the book. the second thing that struck me was that if you read through this grammatically, what really jumps out at you is the absence of american leverage in so many

different conflicts around the world. there are a few exceptions to that, and i would say iran which will discuss with suzanne made one of them, but through so many of the others, there are recommendations for what the president should do, and then the frustration that the united states right now, despite its status it's not on the world's largest military and economic power, but its biggest diplomatic convener, seems to have a hard time convincing other nations what is in the world's interests or america's interest is also in their own. and so i wanted, as i ask questions to each of our authors and scholars here, to ask them to sort of focus in on the question, where the american leverage is, or if it's gone where it went. so tamara, i thought i would start with you. you've written a really

fascinating twitter paper here on egypt and you write that the u.s. cannot prevent the radicalization of muslim brotherhood, but we can seek to mitigate the effects of its radicalization. now, a year ago, of course we all thought that since the muslim brotherhood appeared to be in command of the country, president morsi was still there before the july 2, the question was could we moderate them as leaders. now the question is can you moderate them from basically breaking into a war against the military that unseated them. it was interesting to note that she wrote the foreign aid cuts at the u.s. finally put in effect, not all of the military aid, basically had no effect on the military leadership. that the one thing that we had, the one dial we could turn turned out not to be connected.

so tell us why that was, and then tell us what it is you think we could do to create some leverage over the egyptians in the coming weeks and months. >> sure. well, on the narrow question of u.s. foreign assistance to egypt, i think one reason why that decision, which was finally made in october of last year didn't have much impact, is because it took so long. in fact, according to news reports, chuck hagel, the secretary of defense, had warned of the egyptian military prior to the takeover and outing of morsi that our aid would be at risk if they did that state. they were not -- and in response to the coup the u.s. did not be neatly cut off assistance even though there's a provision in the u.s. foreign assistance act that strongly suggested that was what they should do. so having failed to exercise

leverage -- well, at least having failed to establish the credibility of the threat that it had made, the administration when it finally made the decision to suspend certain forms of assistance in october really was just trying to draw a line under the problem. and i don't think anyone, either here or in cairo, expected it would have an effect. but the broader problem that you identified, david, of reduced american leverage is not about the choices that have been made here in washington. it's about what's going on in the region and what's happening in egypt. the decisions made by the egyptian generals fisher, the decision made by the brotherhood, first to govern in a very troubling exclusionary and and headed matter and then fail to optimize when presented with a mass uprising against that, those choices were driven by the political competition taking place in egypt. at this point the brotherhood

and the military field are engaged in an existential struggle. the military believes they have no choice but to carry out the coup, to protect their own interests and what they did as the stability of egypt. that's what they see is at stake. and the brotherhood, of course is now facing the wrath of the military in a full on crackdown and believe they are fighting for their organization survival. so i think in the context of existential threat on both sides there's very little that any outside actor, even the united states, could do to affect things. given that, what can the u.s. do to protect its own interests? because radicalization of even a small percentage of brotherhood, supporters or members, would present a significant upswing in the problem of violent extremism in egypt and in the region. i think what the united states

seeks to do to mitigate is to set limits on its own involvement and culpability in what is a very far-reaching campaign of repression and suppression in egypt, which has extended not only to the brotherhood, not only to violent extremists that exist and that our real problem for the united states as well as for egypt in the region, but has extended as well to all kinds of peaceful political dissenters. so the united states i think at this point needs to correct its fundamental error in the three years since the egyptian revolution, where it has consistently sequentially overinvested in each leadership, the military council in neatly after the revolution, president morsi after his election, and the gentle, let them not repeat that mistake. and instead clarify u.s.

interest and counterterrorism extends to threats against the united states. and u.s u.s. interest and we'ret going to engage in a full scale investment in an egyptian war on terror that is defined to include all of its political opponents. >> thanks, tamara. so, bruce, we've heard from tamara that our chances for influencing egyptians are a, relatively low, and secondly that we shouldn't over invest in the leadership. fortunately, we have huge influence, have an overinvested in the saudis, who you have written about here. what jumped out at me in your essay was that the saudis have spent $25 billion in the past year and will probably spend 30 this year in jordan, bahrain, in yemen, in pakistan, amounts that

really dwarf anything that we are spending in that region. and they've done this sometimes with things contrary to american interest. for example, there in full support of the coup in egypt that we were just discussing. so tell us a little bit about where president obama is in influencing the saudis. and tell us a little bit as well about what your concern is if the saudi become convinced that negotiations with iran won't work. >> sure. saudis are deeply disappointed in president obama as ted noted in the beginning. they were very optimistic, like everyone else about obama any beginning. rihanna is the first arab country that -- re- odd is the first ever country present a bomb went to. us out of income very

disillusioned. of demonstrated that a solution that issued any number of ways. they refused to take their seat in the u.n. security council. argued that was somehow a spy to the united states. i'm not sure most americans feel that way. that was the saudi argument. they promised to give the government of lebanon $3 billion worth of arms to buy them from the french combat is also some of those to be a spy to the united states that we will get the arms from the united states, and the media is filled with saudi anger and disappointment to the united states. but at the end of the day the united states saudi relationship is not broken. this is our oldest alliance in the middle east that dates back to 1945. they continue to function in many ways despite public irritation. the reason it does and the reef we don't have that much leverage is we need each other. saudi arabia not only is important global energy supply, it may not provide very many

americans with oil anymore that it's critical to the functioning of the global economy. and without saudi oil being distributed at a reasonable price, there would be severe financial energy disruptions. secondly, there soft power in the islamic world remains very important. they are the home of the two holiest mosques in islam. third, they're very important to us in the fight against al qaeda. the last two against al qaeda to attack the united states homeland were thwarted by saudi intelligence. they need us, too. the end of the day, saudi arabia defense against external aggression is with the united states. no one else can provide them with that kind of shield and that especially applies to the iranians. flavor relationship in which we both need each other and, therefore, can't push too hard the other way. what the arab awakening did was expose that their fundamental values at the bottom of this

relationship are not shared at all. and we don't anything really in common with the house of that. they are an absolute monarchy with its own views about gender equality, which are diametrically at the other end of the spectrum from us. we support democracy. they make no pretense of support democracy. and we saw that vividly this year in egypt to the saudis were critical to the coup, to helping the coup take place. they were the first within minutes to recognize the new government, and they have orchestrated multi-billion dollars age -- aid package to the government, saying don't worry what the americans do, we will outbid them. the americans give you a billion dollars, we will make sure you get $6 billion. and that gets to the other, it's hard have a lot of leverage on a country that has this much money but what are we going to say? we are not going to sell you

$70 billion worth of america's military assistance? when it comes to iran, my own view at the end of the day is if the united states and the p5+1 succeeded in getting a deal with the iranians, which the six negotiating party except, the saudis will accept it as well. the saudis do not want to be the odd man out, rejecting a deal between, would be in effect the permanent five members of the security council and the iranians. the also don't want to be in a position where they are the odd man out standing next to bibi netanyahu. there's nothing saudis hate more than be associated at the end of the day with israel and especially bibi netanyahu on some global issue. and they are very uncomfortable today that they are being put into that camp. they don't want to be partners with bibi netanyahu. so i think at the end of the day they will accept the deal. they will criticize it along the way but at the end of the day they will come along and be part of the process spent if there is

no deal? >> if there is no deal been that's up to the americans to fix it. i think the saudi position will be you tried, didn't work, now use force. we will be happy to hold your coat. spent with the also be happy to go by a bomb from the pakistani? >> one of the great unknowns is whether they've already got a deal with the pakistanis for a bomb. that's one of the mysteries of the contemporary middle east and south asia. why does pakistan have the fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world? why are they producing more bombs and the indians by double or triple? is there some external partner who they have a commitment to? on this issue there's a lot of smoke, there's very little fire that anyone has seen, but if you ask my bottom line i think they're probably have been discussions between the saudi and the pakistanis, and the saudis have a pakistani

commitment to provide a bomb and you can take a pakistani commitment to provide a bomb to the bank and cash it for probably nothing. >> okay. let me turn down to steve. steve, we've heard we don't have a whole lot of leverage in egypt. we don't have a lot with the saudis. shirley with president putin we are awash in it. so you've written a couple of different essays -- surely. but the two areas where we are of most concern, apart from the immediate question of the olympics, of course, is the ukraine, and whether or not putin will play or will foil the president's large objective to begin weekend office in 2009 of truly bring down a number of nuclear weapons around the

world. you don't seem terribly optimistic in your papers about the chances of going the on the new start deal. to talk about those two elements. >> in the paper that we wrote about possibly that russia might go rogue in his neighborhood, this was the question about vladimir putin's concern that the european union is intriguing in on his turf. with the association agreements that were initialed with moldova and georgia last november, i think the russians were pleased that the ukrainians basically froze their process. but as we look at this the concern is that sometime in the spring the russians might take punitive actions against georgia and moldova. and the ukraine summit gets back on track, ukraine could also find itself in mr. putin's target sites. the problem we have is there is not a lot of leverage that the united states has now to exercise over the russians on this. a couple of things, one is the deterioration of the u.s.-russian relationship say,

two and half years ago. it's a better relationship. we don't have much leverage to date if you do a, then we might have to cut -- undercut you on b. second, there's a huge imbalance in interest. for russia and for vladimir putin, building russian influence in the post-soviet space is the number one priority. it's important to his vision of rush as a great power. it's important to his domestic, being kept in the neighborhood, adding that influence is important with the constituency that he looks to support at home. he looks at the european union and says, the european union is challenging my customs union project so i'm going to push back. on the case of ukraine, we may have some leverage there. but it's leverage that's going to be maximized if we can somehow work with the europeans. it would deleverage used with the russians but it would be -- the u.s. government seems to be

moving in this direction a little bit yesterday they announced that some ukrainian visas had been revoked because the visa holders have had connections to use of force. there is i think more to be played here in terms of threatening sanctions both visa sanctions and also financial sanctions against the group of people around the inner circle because if they begin to wear that they can travel to the west and here's where it's important to bring in the european union, these folks vacation in europe, their kids go to school in your. i wanted to travel to europe. it's somehow washington and europe can get together to put that pressure, you may begin to have an impact on the ground in ukraine that could a discourage use of violence but also b, very hard to do, but -- a good faith effort to negotiate a critical so i'm with the opposition to that's about leverage when they have with ukraine, that sadly i don't think europeans and

americans have much with russia. on the arms control question, i think barack obama would like to further reduce u.s. and russian nuclear weapons the dilemma he had is to make that negotiation work you have to have a partner prepared to play but at least i'm glad in the putin is not prepared to engage in nuclear reduction. what the russians are doing is they said if you want nuclear reductions you got to solve missile defense. we nail bomb admission makes an offer and they said that good enough and they have to solve probable strike and the russians have tried but they don't seem to be doing in africa actually solving those issues. so in the case of nuclear weapons, there may be an opportunity on this is the russians changed my. but until they do that there's not much that president obama can do. he should not get into a negotiation with them so. although there may be a couple of small steps he might take it will be decried and accelerate the implementation of the new start limited warheads. the united states doesn't need -- the treaty requires that

viacom's by 2018. that coul could be accomplisheds year and it could be something the president could say look, i've talked about reducing the role of number of weapons, we are going to go ahead and move on this. do that towards affecting the view in moscow. it would be basically back to what the president said in his nuclear posture review and positioned the united states to have some demonstrated the liberals at the nonproliferation treaty review conference in 2015. >> a follow-up on that to any possibly the president to just unilaterally go down significantly below the new start numbers? he's got money of studies on his desk that suggest 1000 weapons or even fewer would be perfectly sufficient. that you could rotate some of these in and out. they don't all have to be on call at the same time, which is good news of people in air force having hard time passing. may be having fewer of them out in the silos might help that

process. but what's the downside to acting unilaterally? >> i think at this point the joint chiefs of staff validate the president's proposal last summer to reduce the 1550 number by about one-third which would bring weapon level down to about 1000-1100. i think there are some in the administration or begin to ask, if that's them the was no choice as, if you ever have to use these things, why should we let russian recalcitrance keep the higher never? my guess is a minority view. i think is probably going to be a stance in the administration that let's see for yourself are the russians prepared to engage. made when you get into 2015 or so, at that point it was clear the russians are stuck, and maybe there might be that discretion within the administration about it we do something unilaterally. that doing so i think has two consequences. one is a potential undermines

negotiating with the russians. but also given what i think republicans are in congress, that potentially provokes a fairly big fight with congress. >> vanda, on afghanistan, the big news the last couple days has been the pentagon saying, well, if are going to keep a force in afghanistan after 2014, the biggest issue be is a 10,000 that includes other nato allies. but we are prepared to live with zero if we simply can't get president karzai to operate with us. two questions for you. first of all, does it make any difference, can 10,000 have any significant effect in afghanistan from either a security or a development viewpoint? and secondly, if you go back to last year's report or other reports like this, you will find

discussion about negotiations with the taliban. so for the only one who seems interested in that right now is karzai himself. have lost interest in the issue? >> david, to the troop number is linked as was in the provincial leverage. importantly the troop number is anchored within a critical triangle of the bilateral security event, the elections that are coming up this year in afghanistan, as well as negotiations with the taliban. a tragic of u.s. policy in afghanistan is that this is one place where we've had significant amount of leverage, and often chose not to exercise it. in being aggressively -- some that both governments in afghanistan as well as u.s. relationship in afghanistan.

and, indeed, -- most lease in the negotiations, the bilateral security agreement which is the deal that would allow u.s. forces to stay in afghanistan after 2014. our assumption heading into the edition was that it would be obvious that we are kind enough to devote troops to stay, the advance -- the afghans would jump on that. we have found ourselves shocked and perplexed by the fact that president karzai has refused to sign the deal, is making of a variety of conditions, some of which perhaps cannot be -- and he himself is turning the agreement into what he believes is leverage on his part. to go back to question, does 10,000 troops make a difference, i would suggest. let's see where we are with the security situation in

afghanistan. the afghan city forces have made great strides. they are far more robust, far more competent than they were a year ago. they are not providing security in afghanistan on their own for about half a year. the caliban over the past several months launched a very intense campaign come a campaign that it will struggle to sustain at the current level. afghan security forces have not budged. they have not ceded territory. and they show themselves as -- perform probably better than many of us would have thought. but that said, the taliban is still entrenched. the afghan security forces on nowhere close -- great military as a political capacity to come back, and the afghan security forces are critically suffering from a host of inefficiencies. these deficiencies are not surprising. are ever to stand up the afghan

city forces knew that these deficiencies would be in 2014, and since 2009, 2010 we have been telling afghans don't worry, we will provide critical enablers which will be embedded in the 10,000 force number. and now we are telling them, well, maybe not. you are on your own. your logistics are deeply troubled, well, today. your intelligence capacity and strategic planning is troubled, well, today. we've been promising we will help, but now maybe we are not. and so i think that we are really risking, overestimating the troubles and difficult is that afghanistan is facing, and jeopardizing the potential to strengthened the real accomplishments that have taken place. but let me come back to the zero

number. i actually agree with the pentagon's assessment. either we have a meaningful conversation that can help the afghan security forces, tackle the alabama insurgency -- aren't we go out. if the number is somewhere in between, simply for the show, or because the only hope use the forces left to strike federalist harvest, such as al qaeda targets in afghanistan we're only turning our troops into sitting ducks. we are provoking for the tensions and difficulties in the relationship between afghanistan and pakistan. and we are further justifying the taliban insurgency. so either we recognize that we can still contribute and then make the contribution meaningful that protects our interests, and in regional cooperation on we decide these interests are no

longer worth any more blood and treasure and we go out. let me come back to the elections. afghanistan is in a moment of profound insurgency. as i mentioned a lot has been accomplished, but the future is deeply troubling and uncertain. afghans are watching what the united states will do. vast majority are hoping the united states will stay, military assistance in afghanistan but they're also watching the election. the election or a moment, and opportunity to renew the profound government efficiency that plague the country for the last server use. they are moment of opportunity to resurrect both conference and democracy, but the elections can also go disastrously wrong. instead of either violence or

extend political crisis, and even if they do not overtly go wrong, the process is likely going to be dragged out well into the fall of 2014 into october, perhaps november 2014, even without major crisis associated with the election. but if in that case we do not have a bilateral security agreement and we are waging -- bilateral security agreement, we might find ourselves in december of 2014 with little bilateral security agreement. and the zero option will, in fact, emerged de facto as opposed a result of a strategic decision on our part. my last point, however, is that the u.s. public should get away from constantly badgering president karzai. unfortunately, it only makes him believe that he is ideas are extremely smart play that gives

them leverage. we should reduce the pressure and we should lay our cards out. this is what our commitment would look like. our commitment would not be simply about -- such as al qaeda targets in pakistan but he would also meaningful the continued something to the republic of afghanistan and it is up to date afghanis to sign it. as long as -- had decorations with president karzai, he continues to believe that he holds leverage and that he can milk more out of that leverage. and he discounts the zero option because he has persuaded because he strategic perspective is fundamentally different than the u.s. the washington, the united states government is increasingly -- increasing asking themselves come to have

an interest? is this all -- as president concert with that afghanistan is the fulcrum, the center of u.s. foreign policy, the u.s. occupation to be a great game in central asia. consequently he is persuaded that the u.s. can never walk away from afghanistan and -- as a strategic platform for engaging with russia and for engaging with china. profound misconception that leads to paralysis of policy. >> thank you, vanda. let me turn to my friend jonathan pollack. what president karzai has in common with the kim family is they, too, believe that the center of u.s. policy has always been about the country.

we've had this discussion when kim also was a lead. we have this discussion when kim jong-il was a lot. and i would have it about kim jong-un. to questions about the north koreans. first, did we get kim jong-un wrong? two years ago, the intelligence estimates that you were hearing about were that his uncle was really going to be running the country, that the military wouldn't put up with what they viewed as a spoiled, untested leader. and second, did we get the chinese wrong? that while we understood that they wanted stability more than anything else on the korean peninsula, did we believe that they have the capability of the desire to rein in the north koreans in a way that was made clear during the bush administration and the obama administration, they simply can't do? >> very good questions. i think what the latest events in north korea, yet again

demonstrate, is just how thin our knowledge is about the north. even though, frankly, it's a little geekier than it is to be. for example, in the case of the purge and execution of the south korean intelligence -- is the this and disclose it a few days in advance. it's not as if there's no information coming through. but i think that there was a miss reading in many circles of the way power is structured in the north, the capacity for a member of the kim family to dominate because it is a dynasty. and the fact that he may have been a young impetuous kid, at the end of the day didn't seem to benefit even as he seemed a lot of his actions to take on very kind to deeply and entrenched interest. so if a short period of time he has moved against, that is, two years, he has moved against all of those core leaders who

supported his father concluded a number of people in uniform. he has had his uncle executed, which is extraordinary. and he has defied the chinese repeatedly. so there's something going on here that we still don't fully grasp. the counter argument may be about mr. kim is that the very fact that these extortionary cleavages within the north korean system have not been disclosed, and in effect here was someone appointed by kim jong-il as this close aide and he was a traitor in our midst to our family, but it's a statement to the people of north korea that maybe they are not all wise and all seeing about what goes on within their own borders. whether that's a lasting effect or not we don't know. some people say that it will, but for the moment and i think probably for the foreseeable future we see kim jong-un having consolidated his power and going his own way, building a ski

slope, inviting dennis rodman, all kinds of unusual gestures. >> that worked out really well, didn't get? >> as for china, the irony is the chinese have long insisted to us and to others that they did not have the influence that we believe they could have or should have on the peninsula. and in this case it may well have been true. there's very little to suggest that china had advanced awareness of what was going on, the eminence of the purge and execution. the irony here being that the chinese over the last four or five years have invested usually in north korea, in terms of a much heightened economic role, and much significantly enhanced presence, the presumption of being in china that when kim jong-il had turned ill, had a stroke, that this was an opportunity in a moment in time that they could in effect make their influence felt, and maybe

this time somehow convince the north to look at politics differently, to look at their future differently. spent or to be prepared for their collapse. >> any of the above. but what i think it does illustrate is that the failures with respect to korea, both north korea with respect to intelligence and with respect to policy, collective failures. no one has been able to get this place right or to understand whether indeed there are even levers that could be turned into me kind of a meaningful way. and for now we are stuck, but as i try to argue in the peace that richard bush and i wrote, the question is whether, over time, the chinese see enough of a risk and a danger in north korea that they can be nudged towards higher level of cooperation with us and the south koreans. >> one last question for you and then we will turn to suzanne. on iran. you are just back from the

region to the other interesting assessment that the u.s. had last year was that the chinese and xi jinping industry she would really be consolidating his power by focusing on the domestic economy, worrying about the slow down in growth and so forth. and instead we got the uncertainty that come out of their declaration of the air defense identification zone, continued tensions with the japanese, and to some degree the south koreans on territory and the philippines. is it surprising to you that the chinese are pouring all of that effort into, bizarrely in xi jinping stun? >> i think what xi is trying to do is reinforce his authority both at home and abroad. is a different kind of leader and he seems much less hesitant about demonstrating that. the chinese are juggling a very,

very complicated agenda, but he and those around him don't want to make any suggestion that there is weakness and gullibility on china's part that others can take advantage of. the other aspect of this though that really won't notice is that this is a phenomenon not just in china. is all across northeast asia. if the intent of our policy, the rebounds that would wrote about, that i wrote about, if the intent here was that the united states could find a way to deal credibly, not only with china but all the other states in east asia in an effective way and give them kind of shared incentives for cooperation, hasn't turned out that way. the palpable tensions between japan and south korea. of course, the issues between china and japan to the fact that you had more assertive leaders and all the critical capital's ear is probably not accept what the administration had bargained on, to say the least.

>> suzanne, one area that i think is fairly clear that leverage has worked is iran. sanctions got ramped up, the sabotage of the iranian program got ramped up, and that combined with the election of a new leader brought about a negotiation that a year ago i don't think many of us would've gotten this far. so my question to you is, how much time do we have to actually strike a real deal here before rouhani runs out of running room with the iranian revolution regard, the clerics, before president obama runs out of running room with congress? >> thanks, david. i think it exactly right that what we've seen is the success of strategy that was built on the assemblage of real and powerful american leverage. it was, what would like to see in american foreign policy, i think both a long-term

investment not just in sanction, not just in a covert program that you've written about so widely, but also in the assembling of worldwide consensus for isolating iran and for eliminating the trade and iranian access to the international financial system. it was so incredibly powerful in changing the leadership's priorities there. there was also, i think, it should be credited to the obama administration not just this long-term investment but really a nimble opportunity was presented to it, what we now know as administration was, in fact, pursuing diplomacy, attempting to to engage the iranians even at a time when the pressure was ramping up to its highest level, even at a time without public image was a strategy that was almost entirely pressuring very little engagement. and the fact that those efforts and engagement continued even when i think expectations were lowest, enabled the strategy to

fight off once the opportunity of the rouhani the election came through. i tend to think in terms of the time, in terms of the opportunity today that the balance of opportunity on the iranian side the rouhani was not an action. he was elected as part of a shift within the iranian leadership to put forward a more moderate leadership with the explicit objective of getting a nuclear deal. everything that has transpired since the early days of june, and it was clear on the night that he was elected that this was going to be his primary mission but everything that he is done since that time, the team that he put in place, the speeches that he's made, the trade-offs that is made in terms of his own domestic priorities what he has moved much more slowly and much less progressively than many of those who came out on the street to support them and came to the ballot box have held. his investment is in this program the iranian leadership has given him a mandate to get some sort of a nuclear deal. and the other evidence of that i

think comes in the interim agreement, not just that it was concluded with relative rapidity as you said, a year ago, when we discussed this document, the idea that diplomacy would pay off in any kind of nuclear deal within a span of 12 months, would have been laughed off the stage if i'd made that kind of assertion. instead we did get a fairly comprehensive interim agreement in terms of what the iranians agreed to do as confidence-building measures. never before have we seen them agree to sign on to say they wide range a rate of constraints on their program, although it's nowhere near what we're going to be looking for in the final agreement. >> that takes me to my follow on question. in the follow on the agreement, if you do this as a freeze agreement with tiny bits of rollback, the final agreement has got to be mostly about rollback. it's got to be about expanding the amount of warning time you would have with the iranians

raised a bomb. tell us about how that will play out inside the iranian political theater. >> i think it's going to be an excruciating negotiation. we so how difficult it was to move from the high level interim agreement to the application plan. it took too much, and several advanced by the iranians to walk away from the table. and it clearly provoked quite of backlash here in washington, but ineffective the iranians are signed on at this point. they've gotten relatively little in terms of sanctions relief. a couple billion dollars and some temporary openings in some of the important but certainly not existential areas of the economy. that will not overcome the pain they are experiencing in the loss of a million barrels a day over the course of no savages big they need that final do. they needed to deliver to their people on the expectations that rouhani said. they needed to be up to deliver to the supreme leader because he

has given them a certain amount of running room. that is a debate within tehran. it's not meaningless. it's not wholly fictional by don't think that it is yet at the stage that is likely to undercut ron and will probably not get to the stage that it will prevent him from making a deal until and unless he starts fiddling on the domestic agenda, that's what he's been so cautious there. i don't mean to understate the technical and logistical constraints that are ahead of us. if you read the piece by bob einhorn and experienced newish -- -- you'll see a sort of nightmare scenario where those talks break down and that sermon not outside the realm of possibility. but i think at this point the iranians are in it for the long haul because that's where the payoff is. on the flipside, the difficult is going to be here in washington because clearly the administration has a fight on its head with a congress that is nowhere near over despite the fact that the sanctions bill is

taking a little bit longer to get to the floor of the senate than was originally anticipated. and also with some of our key allies in the region, and i don't think any of those disputes or any of those obstacles to the administration here are likely to get easier in the short term. they are likely to get tougher. >> before i go to the audience the one word would not brought up yet in this discussion is syria. and so i just wanted to ask tamara and steve to sort of step in on this for a moment. tamara, first on the question of given the incredibly warm colleague joe atmosphere of yesterday's opening in geneva, what you expect to come out of this, and steve, on the question of how putin is going to play this. >> well, i'm very curious to hear steve's answer because i actually think that a lot of the american diplomacy, pushing

forward to the so-called geneva ii conference, which is taking place in montréal -- montreux has been premised on the notion that u.s.-russian concert could create leverage over the actors fighting in syria, that otherwise, that could perhaps produce a negotiated end to this fighting, and that otherwise there would not be a near-term end to this fighting. i've questioned that premise for a long time. i've been incredibly skeptical, first that the russians could be persuaded to change their view in backing assad. and second and even if they changed that he would they be able to exercise any significant leverage over assad. i think at the end of the day the reason this conference is happening is because assad is feeling relatively confident. is feeling confident in his ability to persuade more and more actors internationally that

the threat of sunni extremism in syria is sufficient, that he himself is not necessary the greatest threat to stability. and i think he is feeling confident militarily in the balance on the ground. the syrian opposition, meanwhile, has the power of weeks going into this conference, the power to say no and to refuse to show up. reportedly they ultimately did decide to, because they were threatened with the withdrawal of western assistance. this does not bode well, i think, for any concrete outcome from these talks. andentity as the conference has gotten closer and closer, the bar for its success defined by those who can been it has gotten lower and lower. in my own view, and i think the history of civil war backs this up, sadly, the outcomes are going to be driven by the military balance on the ground,

not by negotiators in europe. >> steve, i'm sure you would like to have been a fly on the wall yesterday in the conversation between present obama and president putin on the phone. but how do you think that went speak as well, i mean, i think it applies to say, you've had a period now of about three months were spent a degree of american russian cooperation with some success insurance starting the process, get the chemical weapons out of syria and move them towards the elimination. but that cooperation on that one part of the syrian problem should not disguise the fact that when you're talking about the broader future of syria there's big differences between the way the united states as a future vision of the russian nation. and the russians don't want to see assad tossed out. they seem as part -- they seem as representing a degree of stability. ..

are there microphone's around why? one raise your hand when you get the microphone tell us who you are amply is actually put a question at the end. we will start with this gentleman right here. >> the microphone is coming to you. >> right here.